Ways to Mitigate Bias Before, During, and After the Interview
Photo by Alex Green
Did you know 67% of job seekers consider diversity when assessing a job offer? The hiring process is a pivotal first step in finding and retaining diverse talent. According to Francesca Gina, a professor at Harvard Business School, our unconscious biases “cause us to make decisions in favor of one person or group to the detriment of others.” Unstructured interviews, although common, are not a good predictor of a candidate’s success—they are subjective, often providing irrelevant information that can impact our decision-making. In fact, the University of Texas compared the performance of medical students that were initially rejected from their program but later admitted, to those that had been top-ranked. 72% of the difference in the initial student ranking was related to the Admissions Committee interviews. After one year of postgraduate training, they found no meaningful differences between the performance or attrition of the groups. It turns out, structured interviews are a much better predictor of performance and can lead to far more equitable outcomes.
Below are a few tips to help you mitigate unconscious bias before, during, and after the interview so that you can recruit and retain top talent.
Before the Interview
Identify a group of evaluators. Aim to include at least 20% of an underrepresented group whenever possible (women, BIPOC, etc.). Group composition is key here. Diverse perspectives will help mitigate affinity bias, our unconscious preference for those who are like us.
As a team, determine the top five to six “must haves” for the role (e.g. motivation for the work, a learning mindset, leadership capabilities, etc.). What skills, experiences, or traits are essential to the role? While you may be tempted to include “nice to haves,” don’t. A disappointing response to a “nice to have” could influence your opinion of the candidate overall. Only include competencies that are non-negotiable. Determine if all of your “must haves” are equally important. If not, how will they be weighted?
Design a scoring rubric or scorecard to evaluate each candidate’s response to each question. Clearly define what constitutes a weak, developing, strong, or exceptional answer.
Decide what score a candidate must achieve in order to advance in the process.
Provide training to ensure the team is aligned. Consider hosting mock interviews. This will allow your evaluators to practice using the rubric and identify and fix any blind spots.
Ideally, each evaluator should schedule independent interviews with each candidate to avoid groupthink.
During the Interview
Ask the same set of questions in the same order to all candidates. This will help avoid small talk that can reveal personal details about a candidate’s background, family status, etc., which can introduce bias. While it may seem awkward at times, resist the urge to deviate from the structured interview. Do not skip ahead or change the order of the questions. If the conversation begins to veer toward another topic, let the candidate know that you can revisit the topic later.
Score each answer immediately after it is provided. Do not go back and revise scores unless the candidate shares additional examples of previous “must have” competencies. This helps prevent the halo/horns effect, which occurs when the rating for one competency influences the rating of another unrelated competency.
Avoid making assumptions about a candidate’s intentions—if you hear something that raises a red flag or doesn’t sit well with you, follow up with, “Tell me more about that.”
After the Interview
Submit all assessments to a neutral third-party, a colleague that will not be participating in the candidate selection process, before your team meets to debrief. Have the neutral third-party facilitate the discussion to ensure the voices and perspectives of all evaluators are heard and understood.
Compare candidate answers horizontally, discussing all answers to the first “must have” before moving on to the second “must have,” and so on.
If evaluators unanimously score a candidate below the established requirement, eliminate the candidate. If evaluators unanimously score a candidate at or above the established requirement, advance the candidate. Spend the majority of the time discussing candidates with mixed reviews. Why is there a disparity in the scores? Is there missing information? Could personal bias be influencing the results?
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